ROKiT Williams Racing cancel plans for early shakedown

Rokit Williams Racing have abandoned its plans for a filming day on Saturday to concentrate on finalising the car before testing next week..

Having launched their new 2019 challenger earlier this week, the ROKiT Williams Racing FW42, the Grove based outfit had been scheduled to use up one of its filming days to give its new car a short run ahead of pre-season testing at Barcelona on Monday.

However, with development running behind schedule, the team have elected to scrap the shakedown run so it can ensure it is fully ready for proper testing.

Deputy team principal Claire Williams said: “As anyone would expect, we have had an extremely aggressive engineering programme over the winter.

“As such, we have taken the decision not to run our car during our filming day this weekend in order to allow the team to maximise the time at the factory before we head to Barcelona for the first day of the test on 18 February.”

Williams is not the only team whose car build schedule is running late, with Renault admitting on Tuesday that it could also be forced to abandon a shakedown it hoped to do in Spain on Saturday.

“Sometimes we are vocal about the late change of regulation and this is the harsh reality of that late change of regulations. I believe that we are not the only team to be in that situation.”Renault F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul said.